My name is
Arthur Purves.I address you as
president of the Fairfax County Taxpayers Alliance.

County and
School Board budget presentations this year have been less than candid.

In proposing an
average real estate tax hike of $111 for next year, the County Executive said
that the higher tax would still be $12 less than what we were paying in
2007.That is false, because he
did not include the new stormwater real estate tax, which is hidden in Fund
318.

Moreover, the
County Executive neglected to say that in 2007 we were paying not ten dollars more, but $2,400 more in
real estate taxes than we were paying in 2000.

To reverse the
tax real estate tax hikes made during the housing bubble, you would have to set
the real estate tax rate at 74 cents, rather than the $1.09 that you are
proposing.

The school
Superintendent claims that between FY2009 and 2011, schools made more than $465
million in “reductions and cost avoidances” and eliminated 1,400
positions.However, when we looked
at the school budget, we found that this year (FY2011), Fairfax County Public
Schools estimates that it will spend $100 million more than was spent in FY2009
($2,177M in FY2009 vs. $2,276M in FY2011).We also found that there is this year 161 fewer employees than in FY2009
(22,150 in FY2011 vs. 22,311 in FY2009), not 1,400.

School comments
on achievement do not address college preparation.However of the 3,511 Fairfax County seniors who took the ACT
college admissions test last year, only 44 percent were prepared for college.

School
presentations propose four-percent raises for all school employees as necessary
to remain competitive with neighboring school districts.What the presentations did not say is
that last year, after two years without raises, Fairfax County Public Schools
had 30,000 applicants for 1,000 job openings.They’re even getting applicants from other states that are
in worse financial shape than Virginia.

The
schools claim that for hard-to-fill positions they have far fewer than 30
applicants; however the schools could, but do not, offer hiring and retention
bonuses for hard-to-fill positions.

The
schools are also less than candid when they state that they cannot estimate the
increase in the FY2013 Virginia Retirement System (VRS) payment.That increase is going to be about $125 million.In addition in FY2013 the schools will
lose $21 million of Federal stimulus money.So the School Board is covering up at least a $146 million
budget shortfall they do not want to become an issue for the upcoming school
board election.Instead, they will
spring a budget crisis on the taxpayers right after the election and demand a
large tax increase that will not have been discussed during the election

That
neither the County nor the schools can be honest about the proposed tax
increases proves one thing:They
know that higher taxes do not solve their problems; higher taxes subsidize
problems while the problems become worse.

Consider
these two problems:

First,
County and school employees want raises that outpace inflation. So does the private sector. The
problem is that for decades household incomes have been flat.Are you going to continue to raise
taxes on the private-sector taxpayer so that the public sector can be better
paid than the taxpayers who fund them?

Is
the United States still a prosperous nation? We import more than we export, the
Federal government is borrowing a quarter to a third of its budget, and we
export our technology and manufacturing jobs.This is a national problem, but the Fairfax County Board of
Supervisors can work with powerful national unions and national associations of
counties to be an influence to repatriate America’s manufacturing expertise.The public nor the private
sectors are in this together; neither can have real salary increases until the
United States regains its economic strength.

Second,
public employees would like to keep their pensions, which the private sector
now rarely offers.This problem
would be largely solved if we fixed the job creation problem just referred
to.However, life spans have
increased, employees frequently retire, start drawing their pensions, and then
get another job. As of 1 July 2010 Fairfax County pension funds had an unfunded
liability of $1.7 billion.The VRS
unfunded liability is $20 billion.We asked the VRS how many years would it be before it is unable to pay
benefits.They did not know.It seems likely that retirement ages
will have to be raised to kept these trust funds solvent.

Higher
taxes cannot solve these problems.However, using your influence as Supervisors of Fairfax County, you can
solve them.Remember Henry Ford,
who said, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.”